With less than one week to go, here are few articles
to consider before going to the polls.

Science Magazine did a special report "The
Presidential Candidates on Science" (originally
published in Science Express on 15 September 2004).
Both candidates answered questions ranging from Space
Policy to Cloning.

You can find it here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5693/46

PhysicsToday.org has an article "Presidential
Candidates Speak Out on Science Policies" It can be
found at
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-10/p28.html

On October 14, 2004 "The Aerospace Platforms of the
Presidential Candidates - A Debate Between
Representatives of the Bush-Cheney & Kerry-Edwards
Campaigns" was co-sponsored by Women In Aerospace and
the Washington Space Business Roundtable. Two members
of the Mars Society attended, Alex Kirk and Kevin
Sloan. Alex wrote the following summary.

"The space policy debate on October 14 between
representatives of the Bush and Kerry campaigns, much
like the debates between the actual candidates
themselves, was an informative one -- not so much in
terms of what was actually said at the debate, but in
terms of the connotations that observers of these
debates were able to glean from them.

The two debaters -- Frank Sietzen, a space journalist,
for the Bush campaign, and Lori Garver, a former NASA
associate administrator for policy and planning,
representing the Kerry team -- seemed to agree on most
substantive issues: for example, that NASA was worthy
of continued solid funding, that getting said funding
from Congress was going to be a difficult task, and
that the Mars Rover missions had been inspirational
and should be lauded for their success. Both agreed
that the government should be attempting to inspire
more youths to pursue careers in the sciences, and
both strongly supported SpaceShip One and other groups
attempting to bring private enterprise to space
exploration.

The only major issue on which the two disagreed --
besides the typical areas of partisan bickering, with
the two accusing the other's candidate of having
neglected space issues or of having politicized NASA
-- was on the role of human spaceflight in the overall
NASA vision. Unsurprisingly, Sietzen lauded the
accomplishments of the Vision for Space Exploration to
date, emphasizing all the positives that are
anticipated if America should stay the course and
follow the Bush plan; meanwhile, Garver repeatedly
stated that the VSE was simply the wrong way for the
space program to go, and that while human spaceflight
should not be ignored -- and should in fact be
encouraged -- it should be part of a broader,
balanced, and international set of goals for NASA. The
two sounded as if they were miniaturizations of their
respective candidates -- Sietzen literally called
Kerry a "flip-flopper" on space, and Garver
continually hammered home her assertion that the Bush
vision was unilateralist, and that a Kerry space
program would be much more international in its scope.

Given that the two were both as evasive and light on
facts as their respective campaigns, one could not be
faulted for wondering if anything could be learned
from their responses. Yet the very nature of their
responses, along with their official positions in
their respective campaigns, gives us one very
important piece of information: that space policy
ranks very, very low on the candidates' radar screens.
Sietzen is not even officially affiliated with the
Bush campaign; he was simply asked by
them to serve as a proxy for this debate. Garver,
meanwhile, has done some official work for the Kerry
campaign, but is by no means a full-time operative,
and certainly is nowhere near the top of that
organization.

This point is hammered home -- and explained very well
-- by the reaction to the debate of Keith Cowing, a
noted (if not necessarily well-loved) space
commentator, who said in a piece he wrote on the
debate
(http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=987)
that while he would vote for the Bush team hands-down
if the only issue in this campaign was
space exploration, he would be voting for Kerry this
time around "for a number of reasons that have nothing
to do with space."

While I'm sure this is not news to many of you reading
this -- we've all known space is and has been a
low-priority issue for some time -- it should serve as
a reminder to us all: those in the space advocacy
community need to make their voices heard. If we're
not calling our Congresspeople, sending letters to the
White House, and doing everything else we can to keep
space in the minds of politicians, it is liable to
slip from a minor issue to one that is altogether
forgotten by those in power. So keep up the good fight
-- and get in touch with your representatives today!"

Please get out and vote! The space advocacy community
has made progress over the last several years and our
voices are getting louder and stronger. No matter who
is elected on November 2, there will be much work do
to in the coming year, not only to achieve our goal of
Humans to Mars in the near term, but to keep human
space exploration alive and well and get the world
headed in the right direction - UP!

- The Mars Society Political Task Force

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